23 Facts About Allan Savory

Clifford Allan Redin Savory was born on 15 September 1935 and is a Zimbabwean livestock farmer and former Rhodesian politician.

Allan Savory is the president and co-founder of the Savory Institute.

Allan Savory originated holistic management, a systems thinking approach to managing resources.

Allan Savory received the 2003 Banksia International Award and won the 2010 Buckminster Fuller Challenge.

In contrast, James E McWilliams described Savory as having "adherence to scientifically questionable conclusions in the face of evidence to the contrary".

Allan Savory's work studying the root cause of land degradation began as early as 1955 in Northern Rhodesia, where he served in the Colonial Service as Provincial Game Officer for Northern and Luapula Provinces.

Allan Savory's work continued in Southern Rhodesia, first as a research officer in the Game Department and then as an independent scientist and international consultant.

Allan Savory was influenced by earlier work of French agronomist Andre Voisin who said that overgrazing resulted from the amount of time plants were exposed to animals, not from too many animals in any given area.

Allan Savory saw this as a solution to overgrazing, and believed that overgrazing was caused by leaving cattle too long and returning them too soon, rather than the size of the herd.

Allan Savory says in his memoir that he enlisted as a ranger with the British Colonial Service in the Northern Rhodesian Game Department to prepare himself for guerilla warfare - learning techniques like bush skills and tracking of animals like elephants from local traditions, which could then have military applications in counter-insurgency.

At the time of Unilateral Declaration of Independence in 1965, Allan Savory was a Captain in the part-time Territorial Army unit, the 4th Battalion Royal Rhodesia Regiment.

In 1965, Allan Savory presented a paper to Rhodesian Army Headquarters suggesting the formation of a Guerrilla Anti-terrorist Unit with white SAS operators and black police who would specialize in tracking, and pose as African nationalist insurgents to infiltrate and eliminate their groups - this request was approved, but disagreement between army and police led to the unit's termination.

Allan Savory was elected to the Rhodesian Parliament representing Matobo constituency in the 1970 election.

In May 1973, Allan Savory stated that the Rhodesia Party supported racial segregation including of schools and hospitals, recommending that only Africans who have to work in towns such as domestic servants should be housed in urban areas - and suggested the introduction of a "Minister for Population Control" who would handle the "population explosion" among Africans.

The NUF party won no seats in the 1977 election, and Allan Savory relinquished leadership to Tim Gibbs, son of Rhodesia's last governor.

Allan Savory continued to fight Ian Smith and his policies, in particular opposing the Internal Settlement under Bishop Abel Muzorewa.

In 1979, due to conflicts with the Smith government, Allan Savory left Rhodesia and went into self-imposed exile to continue his scientific work.

Allan Savory immigrated to the US, and with his wife Jody Butterfield founded the Center for Holistic Management in 1984.

In 2009 Allan Savory left HMI and formed the Allan Savory Institute.

Allan Savory's 2013 TED Talk, "How to green the desert and reverse climate change," attracted millions of views and was followed up by the release of his TED Book, The Grazing Revolution: A Radical Plan to Save the Earth.

Allan Savory advocates using high technology to develop alternative energy sources and to reduce or eliminate future emissions.

Allan Savory has faced criticism for his political and military involvement in colonial Rhodesia in the 1970s - particularly for supporting racial segregation and proposing a "Minister for Population Control" to handle the "population explosion" among Africans during his presidency of the Rhodesia Party, and for developing and teaching tracker techniques for all-white military units which were used to track and kill African nationalist insurgents fighting against the colonial government.

Allan Savory has faced criticisms for claiming the carbon sequestration potential of holistic grazing is immune from empirical scientific study.